Tag: Anika Noni Rose

This movie seems to cover a pretty large range of subjects. And to think it is mainly supposed to be a teenage drama romance that is based on a book!

We get these yearly by now, or at least a few times a year. Gotta get those teenage kids buying movie tickets, watching teenagers in love die and shit. Inherently, I can really get into these films, and most of them have made me cry. I honestly knew nothing about the film outside the cover, so I assumed this movie would be about racism.

Which is kind of shit on me. A white person and a black person can fall in love and have NOTHING to do with racism. This film doesn’t touch on it being weird at all. YAY PROGRESS!

The glass ceiling…err wall, will be shattered!

Our story is about a girl named Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg), on the cusp of turning 18, like all good romance movies. Because when people turn 18, they can do sexy stuff and not be weird. Okay, it would be weird for Maddy. because she has severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). It is a thing that means she doesn’t really have a strong immune system, like, at all, and most things could kill her. Yes, like Bubble Boy.

But her mom (Anika Noni Rose) is a doctor and is loaded, so instead of a weird plastic bubble, she can live the entirety of her life in her home. They have a lot of space for her to live and learn and be creative, but she just can never leave. She has a nurse (Ana de la Reguera) who keeps track of her during the day, and the nurse has a daughter (Danube Hermosillo), but those are the only people she has any contact with. Her father and brother were killed in a car accident when she was a baby.

Things are about to change for this unreasonably attractive hermit! Because they are getting new neighbors, and one of them is a similarly aged boy, named Olly (Nick Robinson). His family moves around a lot, issues that they will go into eventually.

And they fall in love. A mysterious love, filled with text messages and typing to each other on the internet. For them to meet, it could mean her death. A love that will truly kill her.

This is a teenage romance film, involving big dreams and the potential of death, that did not make me cry.

But that is not my biggest issue. For the most part I thought the movie was cute, but at most still just okay. One of the main characters, the mom, just felt really bad at the acting thing and was getting on my nerves, but overall, just an okay story.

Unfortunately, the ending really threw me off. Not in a “oh man, plot twist!” sort of way, although that is how a lot of people may take it. It ended in a way that I hoped among hopes it would not end. Little clues started to fill me in that it might head that way, but I was hoping they were tiny false flags and the movie would be somewhat creative.

Alas, it wasn’t. It went for an edgy finish, but it feels like something that has been done before. It just killed the entire film for me and I left disappointed, no longer interested in the cute aspects of the film. And on top of that? I still didn’t even cry.

To end this on a good note, Stenberg was pretty great in this movie. Rue from The Hunger Games is all grown up and melting hearts.

#900. Hooray. Not technically an important number, but it is 100 from 1000, which is sexy as shit.

For this milestone review marker, I have decided to tackle a movie that definitely falls outside of my time range. It came out in 2003, but was such a bomb, that I am pretty sure no one ever saw it, and it was given the Gigli treatment. The movie you know was bad before it came out, and were willing to trash it without seeing it.

I mean, I am not saying this movie didn’t warrant that treatment, for so many obvious reasons. But just how bad was From Justin To Kelly?

I mean, these two kids look like they are at least clean right?

But first, let’s make sure you all understand where this film came from. In 2002, American Idol was born. A huge sensation and hit, it captivated audiences, because it honestly brought something new. The viewer was given the power, it was live, not some just random panel of judges. Oh, and that Simon, he was a mean one.

Well, our final two contestants were Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini and America was left wondering who would win, who!? Well, clearly we know the winner now. Kelly Clarkson is a big star. Justin Guarini is better known as Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons. Despite that, a year later, they decided to ride their fame to the ground and release a movie that probably cost $5 to make, to make America love them even more!

They also had two announcers that year. Did you forget about Brian Dunkleman?!

No, fuck that. It is movie time.

Spring break movie time.

Unfortunately, this movie is rated PG, so any closeness to Spring Break will be missing from this film. Either way, this movie takes place almost entirely in the sun, on a beach, where people sing dance and sing some more!

Where a bro, can be a bro.

First we have our guys! Of course we have Justin, who gets to play himself, from Philly originally but now lives in the beach area. He and his bud, Brandon (Greg Siff) are working on starting a business. A party business, and what better place to start than Spring Break. They can make cash and have fun at the same time. Justin is the type who has a different woman every night, so this is just more opportunity for hot passionate hook ups!

Brandon keeps getting in trouble with the law, a hottie cop (Theresa San-Nicholas) giving him ticket after ticket. The third friend is Eddie (Brian Dietzen), who is a nerd and has been dating a girl on the INTERNET. Hah, what a creep! He plans on meeting her over the break, but he just can’t find her.

She ain’t one of these ladies, that is for sure.

Then we have our girls, straight from Texas. Our main lead is Kelly, and she is a bit shy and doesn’t get out that much, so her friends are responsible for bringing them along. Kelly isn’t really looking for anything, just a break from the mundane. One of her friends is Kaya (Anika Noni Rose), falls in love with a random bus boy, gross. Her other “friend,” Alexa (Katherine Bailess), likes to reject boys and play a tease. Ah, teenagers.

If you haven’t noticed, despite the even numbers, no, we don’t have three friends hooking up with three friends. That is good!

I really am telling a picture with these stories. Look how alone Justin is. He hasn’t found Kelly yet!

Well, eventually Justin meets Kelly, and it is love at first sight. Just kidding, then the movie would be over. But there is some interest, so Kelly gives Justin her number.

Too bad he loses it somehow! Shit, she is also complaining about whipped cream bikini contests. He is totally running one of those later in the week. Oh well, might as well lie.

Oh no, she is also dancing alone. God, why can’t they find each other and have the best love of all the times!

Well, he tries to get her number again from Alexa, who agrees, even though she is kind of interested in him too. Except she gives him her own number just to fuck with him. Alexa is a bitch.

So he is texting her for days but she will not meet up with him, despite their in person conversation. What is up with that? Kelly is left thinking that Justin is a player who didn’t really want her, just a trophy number. Neither side is having any fun. Even when they do meet, they fail to mention the lack or awkward text communication, and end up having their own real life problems. Jeez, why can’t it just work out perfectly?

Well, there is progress here. At least they are dancing near each other.

Long story short, EVERYTHING WORKS OUT FOR THE BEST. Kelly finds out Alexa is a whore. Kira gets with the bus boy who also doesn’t lose his job. Eddie makes other friends and his online girlfriend is for real! Brandon, after shenanigan after shenanigan, is able to meat the cop in her off time and she totally digs him too.

Oh, and Justin and Kelly found out they love each other or something. Time to give up those player hater days and foster this love that will totally last forever, since they live in Texas and Pennsylvania. Also, singing!

Boom. These pictures were a metaphor. And all basically the same bullshit beach.

Big cash cow organization makes a movie, and I am left wondering a few things.

1) Why the fuck did they not cast more members of the final six/eight. I know they have them all under contract, they signed most of them to deals and forced them to go on tour. They’d do anything to get their names out. Why cast even less well known people to star in the other roles. It’d make sense if they threw in a Matt Damon or someone real somehow, but this is just two formerly unknowns getting to sing and dance with a bunch of extras. That is it. How lame.

2) Half of these songs are not unique in anyway. The CD for the film didn’t even end up getting released, due to the large mass of boos and poor numbers. The only reason we know about some of them (because no one saw the movie) was their appearance on Clarkson fan sites and the main song, Timeless, appearing on Guarini’s first (and only?) album. Despite that, no one wants to hear a cover of That’s The Way (I Like It). No one. No one ever really wants to hear the real version either.

3) Where the fuck is my Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken movie? They could have turned them into buddy cops who brought the southern soul to the streets of Memphis, or something. Fuck. I wish there was a movie for every season, especially because I’d watch them all.

The dancing was bad, the music was bad, the plot was pointless as fuck. The hate was well deserved, and we all knew it from the start. Time to go back to judging books by their covers.

Now clearly I am not the market group this movie was trying to capture with this movie. As a white guy, something about the title For Colored Girls does not appeal to me. But as a movie watcher, all movies appeal to me. So I had to see this movie now. Maybe it contained secrets that I wasn’t supposed to know? Like reading letters addressed to to other people. I definitely don’t do that, because that is a crime. Crime is illegal.

And I don’t do illegal things, but I do legal things with items used to stop illegal things.

I was SHOCKED and Taken Aback from this film. I don’t think those are mutually exclusive terms. This movie could be viewed as a series of unfortunate events to happen to seven different black women. From underground abortions, to rape, to child death, the negative happenings just continued to pound away at the viewer, leaving the second half of the film to mostly be a recovery phase, to try and recollect. Seriously. It sucked. You will feel horrible at the midpoint, and then a little bit worse right after that. Each women (who have real names but also represent a color of the rainbow) also gets a long monologue that seems really out of place in the movie. It is in poetic form and it is because the movies are based off of a series of poems, called…wait for it…

Overall, most of the actresses did very well, and the three~ mainish man characters. Unfortunately, with all of the characters and story lines it is easy to forget what is happening to who. Similarly the out of place feel of the monologues push it from a 4 to a 3.

3 out of 4.

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